Another woman said on Tuesday that she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump on a plane in the late 1970s, during a civil trial in New York where the former US president is being sued for rape and defamation by author E. John Carroll.
Jessica Leeds, 81, who had already come out of silence in 2016 in the New York Timesrecounted in federal civil court in Manhattan how, “in 1978-1979”, on a plane to New York, she had extricated herself from her seat in first class because the businessman had tried to kiss in the neck, then put his hands on his body.
“There was no discussion, it came out of nowhere […] He tried to kiss me, to grab my breasts, ”said Ms. Leeds at the civil trial started last week for alleged rape and defamation, brought by Ms. Carroll who is seeking compensation from Donald Trump.
Before the nine jurors, Jessica Leeds explained under oath that she found the strength at the time to get up and leave when Mr. Trump “put his hands under my blouse”.
“It seemed like an eternity to me” when it took place in a few “seconds” added this woman invited to testify by the lawyers of Ms. Carroll, who accuses the former President of the United States of having raped in a dressing room of a New York department store in 1996.
Donald Trump, who did not appear at the trial, refutes these allegations and claims to have never met this former journalist who was notably a columnist for the magazine She.
Jessica Leeds explained that she only came out of silence in 2016, when Donald Trump said, during a presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, that he “respected women” and had never committed sexual assault.
The jurors were able to watch this television sequence, during which the Republican candidate had to defend himself after the broadcast of insulting remarks against women.
“I was furious that he was lying,” Ms. Leeds said.
Earlier Tuesday morning, a friend of E. Jean Carroll, columnist Lisa Birnbach, corroborated the complainant’s account.
She confirmed that she had called her just after the alleged facts, in 1996, to tell her that Donald Trump had “assaulted” her.
“I want the world to know she was telling the truth,” Birnbach said.
This witness was also questioned by Donald Trump’s defense about unkind remarks she had made about the ex-president, described as a “narcissistic sociopath”, a “Russian agent” and a ” employee of Putin.
Comments she assumed on Tuesday.
Donald Trump is not criminally prosecuted for rape in this case. E. Jean Carroll filed the complaint based on a New York state law last November providing that option for one year for criminally statute-barred sexual assault cases.